Chapter 13 - The Peripatetics on the Pythagoreans

Summary

Introduction

Aristotle's students in the Peripatos (active 350–280 BC) are exceptionally important sources for the history of Pythagoreanism. Although none of their treatments of Pythagoreanism survive, numerous excerpts are found in later authors such as Iamblichus and Porphyry. Only one book devoted to Pythagoreanism had been written earlier than those of Aristotle and his students: Anaximander of Miletus’ lost treatise on the Pythagorean symbola (c. 400 BC – Burkert 1972a: 166). The early Peripatos increased this number tenfold. Aristotle himself wrote two books on the Pythagoreans and three on Archytas (Huffman 2005: 583–4). Aristotle's pupil Aristoxenus contributed another five: The Life of Pythagoras, Pythagoras and His Associates, The Life of Archytas, On the Pythagorean Life and The Pythagorean Precepts. No other Peripatetic devoted an entire work to the Pythagoreans, but Dicaearchus and Clearchus made Pythagoras and Pythagoreans prominent examples in their On Modes of Life. Moreover, the early Peripatos included the Pythagoreans in its grand surveys of accomplishments in the sciences. None of these survive, but they were again important sources for the later doxography. The most striking characteristic of these works (Theophrastus’ Physical Opinions, Meno's Collection of Medical Views and Eudemus’ Histories of Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy and Theology as well as his Physics) is their universal failure to mention Pythagoras himself, always referring instead to the Pythagoreans as a group or to specific Pythagoreans such as Archytas or Philolaus. Pythagoras does appear in the works on biography and ways of life by Aristoxenus and Dicaearchus as well as in a later anecdote of Hieronymus of Rhodes (290–230 BC). The Peripatetic view of Pythagoras mirrors the split in the tradition that was present in the earliest sources: Aristoxenus (and Chamaeleon who is probably dependent on him) follow Empedocles in being overwhelmingly positive, whereas Dicaearchus and Hieronymus are heirs to Heraclitus’ bitter critique. In terms of amount of material, the Peripatetics put greatest emphasis on the way of life of Pythagoras and later Pythagoreans. Accordingly I will spend the bulk of the chapter on these topics, after first surveying the Peripatetic view of their contribution to the sciences.